


To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

by cityonfire



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Depression, Not Fluff, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-03-20 00:54:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18981862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cityonfire/pseuds/cityonfire
Summary: Everyone is depressed and wants to die.





	1. Chapter 1

Their connection never snapped, that was the cruelty of it. Even after Fingon’s death, when all Maedhros felt was a numbness gaping hollow in his chest, he still felt the thread of it singing at him. _Follow me_ , it would say, and some days he’d be tempted to. He must have once been capable of doing it without pain, he thought, for his grandmother had herself gone to Mandos in a peaceful sleep. He did not think he could do that anymore. He’d tried.

One of the twins stared at him, breaking him out of his alcohol swaddled thoughts. “I’m hungry,” it said. Maedhros stared back, unblinking. Maglor swept down the stairs, smile painted on just a little too bright.

“It’s dinnertime,” said Maglor, and the twin turned its head at him.

“I want my mother,” said the child, and Maedhros leaned his head back against the rough stone walls.

So the years went, and every night the same, like a stage set for a play. Maedhros, head tilted back in a haze of drugs, Maglor over-cheerful and stretched too thin, and the boys. That was the only thing that changed, really. One blink and they’re children, next blink and they’re older. Maedhros isn’t sure how time passes anymore. The only thing he knows is a dull ache and a thread of marriage that should have snapped with Fingon’s death.

“Teach me how to fight,” says one of the twins one day.

“Go away and let me sleep, Amrod,” he says.

The next day the child stands before him, patient and immovable. Bits of charred flesh hang off his bone and he stares with one bright eye--then Maedhros blinks again and it is the dark haired twin, not the flame haired one, that looms in his vision. “You owe us,” he says,” and then, “do you even know my name?”

“Let me be, Amr--” but as the words leave his mouth he already knows they are the wrong ones, and reaches for another gulp of whatever it is that’s in his bottle.

The dark haired boy is persistent, and unlike his gentle brother, he is a fighter. Night after night he stands there, until finally Maedhros cannot hear burning wood and smell burning meat. The cry of gulls is replaced by the child standing there, hate in his eyes, but persistence also.

“You fucking owe me, kinslayer,” like that epithet was meant to sting. But Maedhros has heard it enough times, and from greater men than this one. Who taught the boy to swear? Maglor probably, in an unguarded moment, and at that thought Maedhros smiles.

“Try and kill me then,” he slurs, and the boy lunges at his throat. Maedhros knocks away the knife easily and sets the edge of the blade at the boy’s throat. “What is your name, then,” he says.

“Elros,” says the boy, looking ashamed to be so easily defeated.

“Come back tomorrow night then, Elros,” he says, not unkindly, and the boy nods and walks off.

There are many things to do to keep a fortress running. Maedhros does none of them. He spends his days drinking, and his nights drinking, and when there are orcs he fights them and prays one of them will finally do what he is too afraid to do. They never touch him. In between this is the boy, who is admittedly improving. Even in his twilight, Maedhros is a renowned warrior.

He comes every day, or sometimes night, and if Maedhros calls him the wrong name sometimes, it stands uncorrected. This is the pattern of their days now, and always the bottle by Maedhros’ side. “You should not drink so much,” says Elros. Maedhros laughs, Elros frowns, it is the same every time.

“You care for him,” accuses Maglor, and Maedhros denies this every time. There are other things Maglor says but then everyone knows that he is mad, that the last of his sanity blew away in the wind long ago. Not that Maedhros is much better. The other boy, Elrond, is rarely seen, and even then only with his brother. He will be a healer, Maedhros thinks hazily. Good, let there be one less person in this world whose trade is in death.

There is a greater emptiness about Maedhros now, but no one comments on it. When he dreams, he dreams of the Void. Sometimes he dreams of dark hair braided with gold. When his dreams are kind, Fingon’s flesh is whole and he smiles at Maedhros, beckoning him home. When his dreams are less kind, Fingon’s eyes stare up at him blankly from a mess of teeth and shattered bone.

A hand on his shoulders startles him awake, and he forgoes the knife, aiming for the throat with teeth bared. The shadowy figure ducks and scrambles under the bed. “Please don’t hurt me,” it whispers. Elrond.

“Why are you here,” he hisses. “ _Leave._ ”

Elrond looks at him desperately. “Please come,” he says, and something about his voice sets chills down Maedhros’ back. He rises fluidly--for all his faults, he is still the deadly warrior orcs warn their children about--and slips down the stairs after Elrond.

He can smell blood. That’s the first thing. The second thing is the small body lying in the pool of scarlet. _Fuck_.

He rolls Elros on his back, limbs loose and heavy. He cannot tell if there’s a pulse at first, then lets out a breath he had not realized he was holding. “You idiot,” he says. He does not know where all the blood is coming from, and hears Elrond catch his breath at the moonlit gleam of the knife held in his hands. “Relax,” he says brusquely, then “go fetch water and bandages.” He cuts the shirt from Elros’ body, blood already sticking the fabric to the skin, and when Elrond returns bathes the pale skin. The water colors red instantly. Just the arms then, that’s good.

“You little idiot,” he says, and sets himself to bandaging. Elros’ eyes flicker open, and they are suffused with rage.

“Let me die,” he whispers. Maedhros is mildly impressed that he can manage that much consciousness, and lets his shoulders drop.

“No,” he says apologetically, finishing the final bandage knot. He doesn’t ask why. He knows well enough the desperation that drives a body to the knife.

He walks away, leaving Elrond kneeling over his brother’s body. The boy is beginning to weep and shake. Maedhros reaches for the flask in his pocket, and takes a long drink.

He goes to Elros the next day. His eyes are sunken in, his face gaunt and pale. “You should have let me die,” says Elros.

Maedhros shakes his head. “I am selfish, forgive me if I did not wish to lose another one.”

Elros looks at him bleakly. “Will it ever go away? This pain?”

Maedhros shakes his head. “I cannot say.”

He leaves, wanting to say more but not knowing what.

He is there the next day, sitting by Elros’ bedside long before the boy wakes. “Let’s make a deal,” he says.

When Elros chooses to go the way of men, holding off death for just a little while longer, his brother mourns and blames Maedhros. Maglor smiles, the same vacant smile he gives a passing cloud or a songbird. Maedhros says nothing, makes no expression, but deep in his heart he is jealous. Elros will live a long life, and then he will die a good death. Elrond will live a longer life, and die no death. Maglor will...exist, in the way that he has for some time now.

Maedhros knows how to long for death. He cannot take that beautiful, graceful release from Elros. But Elros might stay a little while, bide his time. Maedhros has always been an excellent politician.

It’s dark in this stairwell, empty save for a few spiderwebs. Maedhros folds his long legs underneath himself, leans his head back against the rough stone walls, and takes a drink.


	2. A Fool's Errand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maedhros cleans the fortress. It goes about as well as you'd expect.

“You should clean this place up,” said Maglor, an absent look in his eye.

“We have servants for that,” snapped Maedhros, “and I’ve better things to do.” He folded his arms and turned to leave.

“Things to do,” said Maglor. “Things like lying about in a drunken stupor all day, letting the boys trip over you?” It was clearly one of his more lucid days; he spent half his time living in the past and had just the other day called Maedhros _Maitimo_ , to which Maedhros snarled that he was no longer fair. No one had called him that in centuries. “We barely have enough elves to secure the fortress, so why not do a little cleaning?”

He smiled, and Maedhros didn’t quite have the heart to say no. “Why don’t you do it then,” he almost said, but remembered well how, when he would walk past a room with Maglor in it, quite alone, how the sounds of the harp would drift, songs that had not been played in an Age, and Maglor’s cheerful chatter. He’d been talking to their mother. No, Maedhros would do it, if only to stop Maglor’s nattering. It might be an interesting distraction.

Since the Nirnaeth, Maedhros had given up every pretense at order. Mementos from Valinor lay side by side with letters from Finrod, and in truth, the place could do with some cleaning. Anything, really, to take his mind off _bright, shining, two left and they should be yours by right, your father’s jewels_ certain matters. He started in Elros’ room, dusting and sweeping out the cobwebs that had accumulated from centuries of spiders. The boy’s clear eyes watched him intently, arms still bandaged and spotted red.

“What in the name of Ungoliant are you doing,” asked Elros, and he sat up a little straighter to see what Maedhros was doing.

“My brother Maglor thinks I should be cleaning,” said Maedhros carefully, “and I decided to humor him.” Elros looked at him sharply. “We are short of men, and it cannot hurt to tidy things up a bit.”

“I’d not have thought you a maid, prince of the Noldor that you are. What does it matter how _clean_ things are, when we are but a hair’s breadth away from death? Let the cobwebs stay, Maedhros. Go back to your bottles until you are needed, or that mad brother of yours decides that Celegorm” --and here he spat-- “has decided to come calling for dinner.”

Maedhros endured Elros’ scorn patiently. Let the boy say what he pleased. He’d heard worse from Sauron’s lips. “I _was_ a prince of the Noldor. Look at me, Elros, I have lost much of what I was. There is much to be uncovered in this fortress, some of it Ages old. It does not displease me to clean; a true prince is not afraid to dirty his hands.” Elros did not reply.

“Will you let me sleep alone again?”

“When your brother and I think that you are a danger to yourself no longer, yes. Peace, Elros, you shall have your death, and I shall have mine. Patience is all you need.” At this Elros’ face relaxed, and he smiled.

“Maedhros the housemaid,” he murmured. He sank back into his sheets and closed his eyes.

Maedhros shambled into the next room. It had been a storage room at one point, and was full of drawers and cabinets. He opened one at random. Beneath a dead bird lay an elaborate necklace, sapphires and opal studding rich gold. He remembered it well.

“ _My beautiful boy, so handsome. Here, let me fasten this.” Nerdanel smiled and ran her fingers through Maedhros’ long red waves. “Your first party, now remember whose son you are and be proud.” She fixed the necklace to Maedhros’ throat, unscarred and white, and arranged it just so. “My oldest. I love you so much, come here,” and she pulled him into an embrace. He lingered there, reluctant to let go. Nerdanel placed a kiss on his forehead and walked him out the door and into the throng._

Just a bauble. Perhaps one of the boys might like it. He bit the head off the dead bird, considering, then threw the body out the window. He ambled along, making a pretense at dusting, throwing molded papers out the window as well. The day was getting on and warm sunlight slanted through the window slits, playing on the worn velvet of his once fine doublet.

Why was he doing this, anyway? To please Maglor? He humored him well enough; he might as well end this silly charade he was now playing. No one cared about the grime. It’s hard to care when you feel reasonably sure that you’ll be dead before the century is out.

He wandered into another room, opened another cabinet. He opened a drawer that he vaguely remembered as being his in another fortress, another lifetime. A lock of dark hair shone at his, gold braided through it, and he slammed the drawer closed. He brushed shaking hands through his hair, kept cropped close to the skull ever since Angband. They’d been young and hopeful, and kept locks of hair the way lovers did. His hair had probably been mashed into the mire with the rest of Fingon; he knew it used to hang in a locket around his neck.

Letters were there too, creamy parchment and not the rough birch favored by most Noldor. Bound in scarlet ribbons--had he bound them? It was all so hard to remember. Lords and kings send parchment missives, so it must have been a noble. He opened a letter, then dropped it like it had burned him. Fingon’s familiar, bold handwriting stared at him from...he would guess it had been written a few weeks before the battle.

 _From Fingon Fingolfinwion, High King of the Noldor, called Valiant, to Maedhros Feanorion, greetings,_ it read. _My dearest, my beloved, I fear this might be the last letter I write. I pray that it is not, and that we have time for many more such letters, but I feel that my Doom approaches. My guard assures me that all is well, and of course with your aid we shall be victorious. But if it is not so--for I fear Eru has abandoned us and all we turn to becomes bitter--then I wish to set the last words you will hear from me to paper. I do not need to tell you how I feel, but I will write it anyway. I love you, I love you, I love you. No matter where we will go after death, be it Mandos or the Void, I will find you. I pray that I will. There is so much that I wish to say, and yet I cannot find the words. Do you remember our talk of a little stone cottage by a stream? It is that place that I shall picture when next I fight. It is--secretly, shamefully--what in truth I fight for. Wherever you go, there too goes my heart. I know, words every lover has said, but the saying does not make them less true. I await your reply, and perhaps shall sacrifice to the Valar. They may care not, but perhaps they will pity us in our hour of need._

_Until next we meet,_

_I remain yours forever,_

_Fingon_

 

Maedhros shakily drew air into his lungs. He realized that he was sitting on the floor, and found that he did not have the strength to stand. He reached into his flask and downed all that remained. Then he closed his eyes, breathed again. He felt as though he were floating, and as though his body was not his own. Their marriage bond had never snapped, merely dimmed, and he felt as if he could only just follow it, there Fingon would be at the end of it, smiling and full of kisses.

He carefully gathered up the hair and the papers, tenderly, as though they were precious beyond belief. He did not read the rest of the letters, placing them instead on the table beside him. There was a fireplace in that room, and he lit it, sat and watched the embers for a while. The smoke curled and dissipated, and for a moment he let his mind unspool. It would be so easy to slip into insanity like Maglor, or take a knife and end it. But always the Silmarils drove him, and though he could muffle their call with drink and with drugs, sooner or later he must answer. They were a harsh master. His brothers had all learned how harsh they could be. Celegorm was more animal than elf, at the end. He prayed that did not happen to him.

The fire burned hot. Gently, as though cradling a baby, he fed the hair to the flames, watched them curl and sizzle and melt into ash. Then, one by one, he slipped one letter after the other into the fire. To keep them, the knowledge of them ever present, would be like re-opening barely closed scars. The heat of the flames dried any tears that might have fallen, and when he was done, he stood and left the room. He did not look back.

That night, over dinner, when Maglor asked him how the cleaning was going, he stared at him so blankly that Maglor simply sipped his wine and said nothing at all. Elros looked as though he wanted to say something, but wisely chose not to. Elrond looked sympathetic, as though he had an idea of what might have happened, but he too remained silent.

A fool’s mission anyway, to send one man to clean an entire fortress past repair anyway. A fool’s mission, and he had known it. As evening fell and Earendil shone in the distance, cruel in his unattainability, Maedhros sat silent and unblinking in Elros’ room. He could not tell, in that moment, who was keeping whom from the knife that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this at two in the morning so forgive any mistakes.


	3. A Beginning and an End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elros' and Maglor's last meeting

Elros was with one of the most beautiful courtesans in the country when the messenger knocked on the door. There were very few circumstances under which he could be so directly interrupted, and none of them good. He let the courtesan cover himself with a satin coverlet and strode to the door, carelessly naked. Incense smoke curled around the room as he cocked an eyebrow. The messenger looked at the floor, then at the gold plated bed frame, and then at the door. He licked his lips.

“My lord,” he said gravely, “Maedhros Feanorion has fallen.” He did his best to look sorrowful, mostly for Elros’ sake, but also because the occupational hazard of being a messenger to these powerful men and elves was exceptionally high and he was very fond of living. His breath stuttered when Elros motioned him closer.

“Fallen,” asked Elros. “As in dead.” His face was impassive, his eyes hard and clear.

“Also literally fallen, my lord,” said the messenger. “We have heard that he threw himself into a volcano.” He took a step back and lowered his head, feet pointed subtly at the door.

“You can go,” said Elros dismissively and turned back to the courtesan. “What was your name again?”

“Ningannel, my lord.” The courtesan looked nervous as well. “Shall we…”

“Ningannel. A musician, then? Whatever turned you to this profession?”

“It pays better. I can play bodies as well as I ever played harp strings. But my lord, I fear you are upset.” Ningannel looked as if he, like the messenger, would like to flee the room, naked or no.

“That can wait,” said Elros, ignoring the slow emptying of his chest. _You stupid bastard, it was supposed to be me first_...He leaned over and kissed Ningannel slowly, letting the sensation of Ningannel’s clever fingers and skilled tongue wash away his thoughts. He would not think of it, he would not…

Ningannel had grey eyes, framed by long dark hair. Like many of the Noldor then, but very few had grey eyes ringed with blue. Maedhros has been unusual in that regard. “Close your eyes,” said Elros, and Ningannel did. “Keep them closed,” he ordered, and so Ningannel did.

He let Ningannel enter him slowly, letting the sensation take over, letting it erase his mind down to a blank slate. It was almost enough. The incense swirled through the air, and he lay on the bed, letting his thoughts dissipate with the smoke--another trick Maedhros had taught him. He let his breathing even out and slow, lay there unmoving, as still and pliant as a fresh corpse.

“My lord?” asked Ningannel. He pulled out and rolled over to the other side of the bed, looking genuinely concerned. Of course he did, the amount Elros was paying him he would have faked any emotion Elros wanted. “My lord, you seem distressed. Do you want me to remain?”

He looked relieved when Elros waved him out of the room, pausing only to collect his wages and clothes. Elros turned his face to the pillow and if he wept, only he and the damp pillowcase would know. After all his talk of patience and waiting, Maedhros Feanorion was little more than ashes and a fea now free of its scarred, mutilated body. Was he in the Void? Was he in Mandos? Elros wanted to believe the latter but in truth believed Maedhros would find peace in neither.

The next day he slaughtered a ram, collected its blood and drank it, all the while staring the statue of Eru Iluvatar straight in the eye. Then he ordered his finest wines to be brought to his rooms and guards posted outside. No one was to enter.

Three days of drinking later, and after he was over the worst of the hangover--it was very slight anyway, for he was of the race of Elves besides being a Man--he drew up his simplest robes, bound with a piece of silk rope, and ran his hands through his hair. He rolled up his sleeves with arms that were only faintly scarred, and outlined his eyes in kohl. His lips he covered in kohl as well, in the manner of mourners. He tied a knife that Maedhros had given him to his belt, and, without notifying his retinue, silently went to the stables, mounted a horse, and rode away.

He rode for eight days and nights before he could hear the cry of the gulls, smell the salt tang on the air, and hear the waves crashing on the shore. He dismounted, but did not secure the horse. Either she stayed, or she did not. It was of no great matter to him.

He walked for another three days, leaving footprints behind him in the dusty sand, letting his long hair and carefully trimmed beard crust with salt. His water and food reserves grew low, but he found he didn’t much mind. The fog rolled low over the ocean and the moon shone hazily, Earendil the only star that shone that night.

He almost didn’t see the tall, thin figure that stood near the water’s edge, waves washing over its feet. The hooded figure did not turn, gave no recognition of Elros’ presence. Elros walked up to Maglor and laid his head on Maglor’s shoulder. It fit perfectly, it always had, and Maglor drew thin arms around Elros as they stood on the beach, folded together the way they had when, in the past, Maglor was more lucid and loving. Gulls shrieked high above them, and Elros fancied that they shrieked Maglor’s pain and Elros’ pain as well. Once, Maglor could have brought a concert hall to desperate sobs with his voice alone. Now he stood silent, unmoving.

“Say something,” said Elros. The silence was more unnerving than anything, and stretched on and on. Finally, Maglor reached his palm out slowly. One by one, he uncurled his fingers. First the index, and a bit radiance began to shine. Then the middle, and the light grew brighter. Than the ring finger and small finger at last, and Maglor’s hand lay open. His flesh bubbled and blistered, but his glassy eyes gave no hint of pain.

To see a Silmaril at last, Elros could understand why kin would slay kin, why men would slay men and elves would slay--well, anyone. To see it was to desire it, and he carefully tamped down that part of himself that lusted for it. He could snatch it from Maglor’s open palm, it would be so easy...no, the Silmarils were not his curse to bear and he would not betray Maglor’s trust.

“My brother is dead,” said Maglor at last. “The pain of it was too much for him, in the end.” He cocked his head curiously. “Do you miss him?”

“I do,” said Elros. “I hated him for a very long time, but I pity him now. He was once so bright and beautiful, as near to the Ainur as one can be. He was good and kind once, and I saw it once or twice, I saw buried underneath all those centuries of blood and fire.”

Maglor flinched at the word _fire._ “It burned him, and he ached to burn for so long. It was his Doom, and he met it gladly in the end. I am alone now.” He gazed over the open expanses of the sea, barren as a desert to the eye. “I have tried to sail West, but something blocked my way. This is my Doom.” He smiled sadly.

“You could come with me,” said Elros, but the words stuttered and died in his throat. Maglor already looked vacant, gazing at the shining jewel in his hand, at the flesh spitting and roasting around it.

“Such a pretty thing,” he murmured. “Such a pretty thing, but so much pain. Where are my brothers now? Maitimo, Tyelcormo, Carnistir, Atarinke, Ambarussa…” The wind whipped the hood back from his face and made his hair whip wildly about.

“Don’t do it,” gasped Elros, but he might as well have tried to stop a mountainslide.

Maglor stepped forward deliberately, one foot in front of the next, until the waves lapped at his calves. He reached out his closed fist, smoke curling from between his fingers, and screamed, the sound scraped raw from deep inside him. When Elros touched his fingers to his ears and nose, they came away scarlet.

Maglor bent his entire body, powerful yet wasted harper’s arm bent back. He shrieked again, and cast the stone deep, deep into the ocean. “ _Bring me back my brothers,”_ he screamed, and folded in on himself, collapsing on the beach.

“Come back with me, Maglor,” said Elros, but Maglor bared his teeth. “There will be no comfort for me, Man, until the world falls.” He drew his cloak around him and walked away. Elros stood still for a minute, watching him walk. Then he too turned, and walked his own way. He did not look back.


End file.
